


taste your lipstick

by shutupluke



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Pure fluffy bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 15:38:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19726627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shutupluke/pseuds/shutupluke
Summary: Like- she’s met pretty girls before. Been in love with one, even. Never in her life, though, has she felt like she might have a heart attack because of some goddamneye contact.She feels worse than when she thought she was going to die in that elevator, like a million times worse, which means she is probably going to actually die this time.Is this how Steve feels all the time? Like, he just looks at a girl and that’s it, he can feel himself falling? Because she gets it. God, she actually understands why he’s such a dumbass if he feels this disarmed all the time.





	taste your lipstick

**Author's Note:**

> Listen- I binge watched stranger things 3 and made the executive decision that Robin needs a girlfriend, and if I can’t be that girlfriend then I’m going to write one that’s good enough for her. 
> 
> Title from King Princess’ Talia because of course it is.

“Steve,” Robin whispers conspiratorially. “12 o’clock.” He looks at her, head tilted like a confused puppy, and she sighs long-sufferingly and gestures towards the group of girls who just walked into the shop as subtly as she can manage. 

They’ve spent almost their whole summer since the Russian episode practicing this routine- Robin has shaped Steve into the smoothest, most charming store assistant of all time, and in doing so has bagged Steve eleven dates. The issue is that with Robin out of the picture, Steve somehow messes it up and the dates end up going nowhere. Frankly, she’s getting tired of how her amazing wing-womanning is being wasted. But, despite the fact that Steve is undeniably a dingus, he’s her best friend and she wants him to be happy.

Steve runs his fingers through his hair and takes a deep breath, before sauntering over to the group of them. “Welcome to Blockbuster, ladies, can I help you with anything?” 

The girls giggle, and one of them, the blonde one with the pink shirt who Robin immediately recognises as the alpha, cocks an eyebrow. “That depends,” she says, “can you recommend us a chick flick to watch tonight?” The girls burst into laughter again, thinking that they’ve caught Steve out, but Robin’s taught him better than to be tripped up so easily.

“Of course! I personally would recommend 16 Candles- Molly Ringwald gives an amazing performance and the story is really romantic…” The blonde girl stands, mouth agape for a moment, before she actually smiles. 

Bingo, Robin thinks. Smiling to herself with strangely maternal pride, she turns away. 

“Shit!” She exclaims, dropping the copy of Risky Business she’d been putting back on the shelf before she’d entered Wing Woman Mode. There’s a girl stood right beside her, so close that Robin can smell the sugary vanilla perfume on her russet skin. 

“Sorry,” the girl says, smiling at Robin apologetically, wrapping one of her raven curls around her finger absentmindedly. She’s holding a copy of Back to the Future in her other hand, must have just pulled it off the shelf right beside Robin’s head. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

It feels like somebody has sucker punched Robin in the stomach. She stands there for at least two full seconds just staring, ogling, practically, before she pulls herself together. 

“No, no it was me, I should have, uh, should have been paying attention.” She tries to smile back but her face muscles are lagging behind her brain so what actually happens is more of a spasm, or a twitch. 

The girl’s eyes, obsidian dark, narrow almost imperceptibly, and she takes a step back. “Uh huh.”

“Amber?” Calls one of the girls from behind Robin. 

The girl looks behind Robin. “What?”

“Is sixteen candles okay with you?” 

Amber smiles at Robin again, nervously this time, awkward, when the first time she’d been dazzling. “Excuse me,” she says after a second, and Robin realises she’s standing right in her way. 

Robin doesn’t say anything, afraid that she’ll do something embarrassing again, just flattens herself against the shelf and hopes she doesn’t spontaneously combust.

Amber is maybe the most beautiful girl Robin has ever seen. Like- she’s met pretty girls before. Been in love with one, even. Never in her life, though, has she felt like she might have a heart attack because of some goddamn _eye contact._. She feels worse than when she thought she was going to die in that elevator, like a million times worse, which means she is probably going to actually die this time. 

Is this how Steve feels all the time? Like, he just looks at a girl and that’s it, he can feel himself falling? Because she gets it. God, she actually understands why he’s such a dumbass if he feels this disarmed all the time. It’s hard to be all smooth and charming when her brain is just firing off incessant nonsense about the colour of Amber’s eyes. 

“Robin, there’s a customer!” Keith yells, and she waits for a moment to see if her heart explodes before she walks behind the till. 

Steve catches her eye as she’s serving the customer- a kid who is very clearly not 13 trying to rent a copy of ‘Weird Science’- and he looks at her incredulously. ‘What the fuck?’ Steve mouths, and she pointedly looks away from him. 

“Listen, kid, we both know you’re not old enough to watch this movie, and company policy dictates that I’m supposed to ban you for trying to commit fraud. However, if you should come back with a copy of say, ET, I can pretend like this never happened? Got it?” The kid nods, grateful, and she shoos him away from the counter. 

Steve takes his place. “Don’t think I didn’t see what happened back there, Robin.” He hisses, elbows firmly on the counter. “You totally froze up!” 

“Did you uh- I don’t know- see her? Obviously I froze, Harrington, I have EYES.” 

“Oh my god, you have a crush on her!” He exclaims. Robin rolls her eyes. 

“I don’t have a crush on her, I don’t know anything about her! I’m not you, Steve.” 

Steve picks up a video and slaps her on the arm with it. “Uncalled for.”

She rubs her arm half-heartedly. “Sorry. Did you score?” 

“Picking blondie up after work on Friday.” He holds his palm out, grinning at her, and despite everything she high fives him across the counter. 

“She’s cute! Don’t screw this one up.” 

“I’ll try not to; speaking of…” Steve trails off as the pack of girls approach the counter. Blondie leads, obviously, leaning on the counter beside Steve and handing Robin the copy of Sixteen candles to scan, as well as a bag of microwavable popcorn. 

“I’ll handle this one,” Steve says, jumping over the counter to ring the girls up and continue flirting.

“Are you free?” Robin looks up and Amber is stood in front of the other register, holding the copy of ‘Back to the Future’. 

Robin nods, dumbstruck again at the mere sight of her, and holds out her hand to take the video and scan it. 

“Have you seen it?” Amber asks, an inquisitive glint in her impossibly dark eyes. Robin takes a deep breath and looks down at the register, pretending like she’s doing something on the screen when in reality she just can’t maintain eye contact for fear she’ll just crumble into nothing. 

“Kind of? I watched half of it, sort of, by accident, but I was high and then StarCourt burned down so I couldn’t finish watching it and- it’s a long story.” 

“It seems it. Did you like it?”

Robin shrugs, meeting Amber’s gaze head on. “I think so? And everybody has been raving about it, so I would definitely recommend that you watch it.” 

“Do you want to?” Amber asks, fixing Robin with a look she can’t for the life of her read.

“Do I want to what?”

Ambers mouth twitches into a smile that seems maybe a little bit fond. “Watch it?”

“Uh, I guess so. I can’t really remember the plot so I think I’ll definitely watch it again at some point.” 

“Oh, okay.” Amber breaks their eye contact and looks at the floor, and it almost looks like she’s upset? Robin has no idea why, though.

“Excuse me,” Steve says, leaning across Robin and pulling her bodily away from the counter to whisper yell at her. “She’s asking you out, dingus!” 

Robin looks at him like he’s lost his mind, not for the first time. “No she isn’t?”

“Oh my god, Robin, you are a moron. I can’t believe I’ve been trusting you to wing-woman me for months and you can’t even tell when a girl is into you!” 

Robin guffaws. “She’s not ‘into me’! She asked if I liked the movie!” 

“She made conversation and then she asked you if you wanted to watch the movie she was about to rent! How can I spell this out for you any clearer?” 

“Um, excuse me? My friends want to leave so could I pay you and get my receipt, please?” Amber calls out. 

Robin shoves Steve off and goes back to the counter, smoothing herself out. “Sorry about him. Your total is $3.99.” 

“I have a week to bring this back, right?” Amber asks, handing Robin a 5 dollar note. Her fingers are small, slender, and her nails are painted baby pink. Robin prays that she’s not grossing Amber out with how sweaty her palm is. 

“Yeah, 7 days from today.” 

“Will you be here, then? 7 days from today?” 

Robin is thrown off by this question. “Uh, yup. I’m here every day but Saturday.” 

“Okay. See you in a week, Robin,” Amber says, touching Robin’s outstretched palm with the tips of her soft fingers when she takes back her one dollar and one cent worth of change. She drops it into the tip jar with a wry smile, and then she walks away. 

Robin stands there, shell shocked, as Amber catches up to her friends outside the store. She turns to Steve, eyes still fixed on the retreating group of girls. “Okay, maybe she was asking me out.”

~

Today is the day of reckoning. Steve had been out with the blonde girl- Claire, her name is Claire- on Friday, and he’d confirmed that Amber was 100% asking Robin out, and then made fun of her profusely for having the world’s worst gaydar.

He spent all week putting on this voice which Robin assumed was meant to be girly but came out way more Mickey Mouse, and said things like “Steve you’re such a dumbass no wonder you can’t get girls… I on the other hand am always successful with the ladies and am in fact married,” over and over until Robin had beat him up with a copy of Star Wars and had to be dragged off by Keith. 

Robin is so nervous she thinks she could actually wet herself. “What do you think I should say? Do you think I should wear my hair up or down?” 

“Your hair is the least of your problems- you can’t hide the fact that you’re a huge nerd who was in BAND whether your hair is up or down.”

Robin presses her pointer finger into his chest, as menacing as she can feasibly pull off, and tells him; “Listen, you’re not my first choice for girl advice but you’re kind of all I’ve got on short notice so just work with me, Harrington. You weren’t called ‘the Hair’ for nothing!”

Steve pauses, assessing her. “Down. It looks cute down.” Robin unpins her bun, shaking her hair out. Screw company policy, anyway. Steve’s hair was almost as long as hers and he didn’t have to tie his back, so, actually, fuck it. 

“Oh my god, oh my god, that’s them,” she hissed, watching two girls climb out of a red Toyota. 

“Stay calm, dude. You’ve got this. You’ve taken down Russian communists and aliens- you can talk to a girl.” 

Claire comes in first, making a beeline for Steve and leaning across the counter to kiss his cheek. “Come and recommend me a movie,” she says, and Steve shrugs at Robin before doing what he’s told. 

Amber smiles nervously and before Robin can think herself out of it she meets her eyes and smiles as warmly as she can muster.

“What did you think of the movie?” She asks. 

Amber coughs, averting her eyes bashfully. “I didn’t watch it.” 

“Oh! Well, you can always rent it again for another week if you got too busy.” 

“I wasn’t too busy. I was just thinking that maybe, uh… you might want to come over, and we could watch it together? Maybe?” 

Robin grins so widely her cheeks hurt. “I’d love that.” 

The two girls just stand there, smiling at one another for a moment until Steve whoops. “You know what that means, Robin! Double dates! Oh man, I am so excited for this.” 

Robin groans, and Amber laughs, touching Robin’s hand across the counter. The feeling hits her like a jolt of electricity, but it also somehow seems familiar, comforting. “There’s three of us and one of him- he’s definitely going to regret saying that.” Amber replies cheekily. 

Maybe she’s right. Either way, the prospect of double dating with Steve doesn’t actually seem that bad, as long as she’s with Amber.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, catch me on tumblr @ mashlumtrash


End file.
